OnStar Adds Customers, Services, Presence

December 28, 2005

In its tenth year, OnStar grew to almost four million customers, an increase of 30% over 2004. An OnStar survey showed over 75% of subscribers say they prefer to have OnStar in their next vehicle, and almost 90% say they would recommend the service to others.

The company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GM, announced that it would become standard on all GM retail vehicles in the United States and Canada by the end of 2007. In September the company rolled out OnStar Vehicle Diagnostics (OVD), a GM-exclusive service that conducts remote diagnostics and sends a personalized monthly report to the subscriber.

In an average month, OnStar advisors respond to more than 340,000 routing calls, 44,000 remote door unlocks, 25,000 roadside assistance calls, 32,000 remote vehicle diagnostic checks, 500 stolen vehicle location assistance requests, 900 air bag deployment notifications, 15,000 emergency service requests and 5,500 good Samaritan calls for assistance. To date, OnStar has had more than 53 million subscriber interactions including more than 12 million routing requests, 1.25 million door unlock requests, 750,000 Roadside Assistance requests and 25,000 air bag deployment notifications, according to GM.

OnStar has launched six generations of hardware during its 10-year history. Debuting exclusively on Cadillac models in 1997, OnStar is available on over 50 GM models today.

Source: GM.